Chapter 25

We spent a couple of days locating stun guns. We didn't procure fire arms because we didn't really want to kill anyone, just immobilize them for a while. We got half a dozen small ones which used only one battery and discharged 80,000 volts. If a charge from one of these wouldn't knock them down, I don't know what would.

We returned to the house with our stun guns and attached them to strings of opaque nylon that we all had helped twining wider so that they would be more comfortable to wear around our waists, this time in the Machine. With some difficulty, we got inside.

We went into the library first, as the greatest likelihood of finding any documents would be there. However, we found nothing that would compromise anyone in or on the desk. I soon got tired of looking through papers that I didn't understand a word of, and went down the stairs and tried the door at the bottom. It was locked. I looked around to see if there was anything that I could use to pick the lock with, without any luck, so I went upstairs again and told no one in particular what I had found out.

"Hey, look at this!" Nina whispered in a half-loud whisper.

I heard that her voice came from one of the bookshelves, and when I looked over, I saw an open book floating in the air. I went over to her, thinking that it was a strange time to start reading.

"See," she whispered when she sensed that we stood clustered around her. She turned the book so we could see the picture inside. It was a photo of a woman in bondage, or maybe it was a BDSM picture; I honestly don't know the difference, if there is one.

"Shit," Sabine exclaimed. "It's a photo, taken at least a hundred years before the camera was invented!"

"Yes. No doubt about it, we are in the right place!" Fritz said a little excitedly.

Knowing that we were onto something made our spirits race, and we started searching the place with more eagerness.

"I know that my grandfather used to have a secret room in his library," Charlotte said. "Maybe there is one here too."

"Well, how do we find it if there is one?"

"I once saw a movie where you had to turn a knob and the bookcase swung open..."

We looked and pushed and pulled at everything we could find. It was Charlotte who found it; behind a picture there was a lever and when she pulled it, not a bookcase, but a piece of the panel opened! Eagerly we all peeked inside. There were more books, and we looked them over. They were all pornographic. Just inside the door we found a couple of keys hanging on a hook.

"Let's go downstairs and try them out!"

Earlier I had quite a bit of luck opening doors in the cellar, but I can't say that I was expecting to find any new beautiful woman to incorporate in our steadily growing colony.

We went down the stairs and tried the keys. One of them did fit the lock, and we entered the corridor that stretched inside it. This corridor wasn't as long as the one we'd explored at the monastery, but still it was long and wide enough to have doors on either side. These doors had small, barred windows, making it easy to see what was inside the room. I hurried down the corridor, and I could hear the others following me. As I passed each door I glanced inside, and inside every cell, as it turned out, there was a prisoner, most of them chained to the wall, but a couple of them just lay on their bunks, not moving and hardly breathing. As I approached the last cell I could feel Fritz standing there with his arms spread, stopping us from moving to the last cell.

"There's nothing else in the two last ones," he said. "We must find the Machine before we do anything else. I think we should come back here, and to the monastery as well, and free all the prisoners. Open the doors for them and give them a chance to escape; that is all we can do for the poor things. But first the Machines."

We roamed the house and, as before, we found it very odd that we never saw anyone about, either standing guard or going to the kitchen for a late snack, or anything. The house could as well be deserted. There were some more doors on the top floor and when we listened at them we could hear snoring from inside. Charlotte told us that this floor was usually reserved for the servants, so we didn't bother to look inside them.

Next, we went outside and over to the stables. There were the two horses munching on some straw, but otherwise it was empty.

"Where is the coach?" Charlotte suddenly asked.

I imagine that we looked at each other with the same stupid expressions on our faces. Of course. The coach was missing! It was so obvious that we had overlooked it.

"That's it! He must have hidden his Machine inside the coach! Just as we did with ours in the van!"

Now that we knew what we were looking for, we searched the whole place for the coach but it was nowhere to be found.

"OK, I'll need some wax or something," Fritz said, "then we're out of here."

"Wax? Why?" Sabine asked.

"To make an impression of the keys. We have to come back, and I don't want to walk into the library first."

We found some candle ends in the pantry and Fritz, softening them over the residual heat of the stove, made his imprints. Then we put the keys back and tried to erase every clue that might show that we had been there. After that we all went back to our own place.

After we had satisfied the women, and ourselves, we related the story of our trip to the whole family. Slowly, and without any previous planning, our two groups had merged into one and it was an almost free sex society now living in the mansion. Only Charlotte and Irene had so far been absolutely monogamous. Well, Irene had strayed with me a couple of times, but as her pregnancy advanced and her belly grew to its present proportions, she delayed all fucks for as long as she could. But, then she was so hot that her cunt overflowed of streaming juices and she almost swooned in delight at her orgasms.

Charlotte was another story. I don't know whether it was something to do with her young age, fifteen, or if she still were a bit shy, her upbringing in a strict Catholic home or what. By conversations I had with her, I assumed the latter. (She didn't hesitate to come to the breakfast table nude though.) She had hinted that she hadn't been to confession for ages, but I hadn't paid any attention to that, not being a religious man myself, as were none of the other family members.

We made plans and what we came up with was quite simple. We would try to track the Coach/Machine with Snoopy first. If that turned out to be too lengthy, we would take a more desperate approach and go to the destination of the one-way Machine at the monastery. We didn't like that idea much, since we didn't know what was waiting at the other end.

Also, Fritz should learn how to use a sextant. In case we had to go by the one-wayer we would also have to go to that place in our own Machine, and to do that we had to know where it was... exactly.

I should get our coach back here and build a Machine inside it. We could, after all, not trust the good Miss Fortune to be as generous as she had been so far. I managed to get the coach back to our workshop and was in the middle of converting it when Chris came to me one day.

"Dad," she said a little hesitantly.

"Yes dear." I knew that she wanted something, otherwise, she wouldn't call me dad.

"I think there is something wrong with Charlie!"

My head snapped up in alarm from the work I was doing.

"What?! Is she ill?"

"Oh, I don't know, but don't you think that it is odd that she hasn't had her period once since she came here?"

"She hasn't? Have you asked her?"

"Yes, she was a little reluctant to talk about it but finally I got her to admit that it has been... gratefully absent."

"Oh. She's not pregnant?" I asked just as alarmed at this prospect as at the prospect of her being ill.

"No. I don't think so. She said she hadn't had any since she was taken prisoner by that man."

"Perette," I said, a little absentmindedly. "We have to get her to a doctor... you know, a gynecologist."

"Mmm, I thought so too. Can you take us to my place?"

"Sure. When do you want to go?"

"Oh, I think it's better to get it out of the way as soon as possible. I thought that I might take her to the one I used. I'll tell him that she is a cousin from France; that will explain why she doesn't have any papers."

"I don't think so. She would need at least a passport."

"But you don't need a passport to travel in Europe. You know the Schengen treaty and that."

"I know, but you still need some means of identification. Tell you what, are you up for some breaking and entering?"

"Daddy!" She cried out. "We can't go into the doctors office and do it ourselves! We don't know what to look for!"

I chuckled a little at the thought of getting the beautiful girl up in the chair and...

"Dad! I know what you are thinking! You'll better forget it!"

"Oh, OK. No, what I was thinking was that we could stock up on blank birth certificate forms, and maybe a stamp and such."

"Oh yes! How clever of you!"

"Oh, that's nothing. You should hear me on a good day," I said humbly.

She stepped over to me, hugged me tightly and gave me a quick kiss. "I've seen you on your good days and on your bad days, and I know that this was just a lucky coincidence that there was a thought that didn't kill itself against the bone in your skull when it popped out of that little brain of yours," she laughed and fled, but not before I had time to swat her butt making her shriek and laugh.

The next day I took my daughter and Charlotte back to her apartment. Chris made a call to her doctor and persuaded him to see Charlotte later that day, which left us with almost a whole day on our own. I decided to take Charlotte on a little tour in my hometown, not that there was much to see but she was awestruck at everything she saw. The school, the hospital, the shops and even our town park made her laugh happily.

"I could like it here," she said at one occasion. Chris had a thoughtful look on her face for the rest of the day. I knew better than to ask her what was on her mind. Sooner or later she would get around to letting me know what it was all about.

We had lunch at a nice restaurant, and then Chris gave Charlotte a run through about her visit to the doctor's. Charlotte alternately blushed and whitened at the descriptions of what she was to expect. Chris even suggested that Charlotte should have some form of contraceptive, preferably a diaphragm since she was a bit too young for birth control pills. I agreed, but I could see some hesitation on Charlotte's face. It reminded me about her Catholic upbringing, but I didn't think that the Pope had been so futuristic in his views that he had already banned contraceptives in Charlotte's time so I asked her what it was that worried her.

"I want to have a child," she blushed.

"Oh, you can have as many as you want. Later. When you're about twenty or so. You have so much to learn first..."

"Yes that is what I have been thinking of," Chris interrupted. "I have decided that I want to start at the university again. I want to be a doctor," she said before I had time to congratulate her on her decision. "And I think it would be a good thing if we put Charlotte in school as well. She has to learn something before she gets too old..." her voice trailed off.

"What an excellent idea," I said. "But why a doctor?"

"I think we need one. Who knows what lies ahead? We could get into real battles, someone could get ill, we have Adam, and I suspect that as soon as this thing with the Abbey blows over, there will be more babies made... and we already have a schoolteacher."

"OK, OK. What do you say Charlie? Do you want to go to school?"

"Why?"

"Well, you may want to be a doctor like Chris, or a teacher like Nina or something else?"

"I want to stay with you." I could see that tears started to well up in her eyes.

"You will, honey. You will, as long as you wish to. You are only a jump away from us, and you'll be able to get home as often and as much as you want to. Think about all the fun you and Chris can have on your own in the city."

She looked very doubtful, but she promised to think about it. We took another walk, and eventually, we ended at the doctor's where we were immediately shown in to doctor Alsberg. I explained the situation to him... well somewhat that is. I said that Charlotte had gone through some traumatic experience in France and that she hadn't had her period for about three months. He asked some questions, then asked her to step behind a screen. Chris, who understood what was expected, followed her behind it and helped her. Soon she appeared again, dressed in a hospital robe that ended just above her knees.

Doctor Alsberg measured her height and weight, then had her sit on the exam table while he listened to her hearts and lungs, the usual stuff. After a thorough physical exam, he had her lie down and put her feet in the stirrups. I sat beside her and held her hand while the doctor probed between her legs. She whimpered a couple of times but, other than a light blush, she did fine.

After the exam the doctor told us that there was nothing wrong with her and that he couldn't see why her period wouldn't start again as soon as she had rested some. He asked her to come back in three months and gave her a new appointment.

We went back to Chris's flat, and while the girls tidied the place a little, I sat in the sofa looking at them. Charlotte saw me looking and gave me smile as she came over to me and sat in my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck, and showed that she wanted to be kissed. The kiss escalated as they often tend to. My hands intuitively found her little breasts and pinched her nipples lightly, teasingly into hardness. Chris saw what was going on and told us to go into the bedroom, saying that she should dust just a little more and then she would join us.